


Hindsight

by Oceanbreeze7



Category: Alex Rider (TV 2020), Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alex Rider Needs a Hug, Alex Rider is a Mess, Angst, Blindness, Blood and Injury, Chemical Weapons, Eye Trauma, Gen, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Serious Injuries, Yassen Gregorovich needs a hug for once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29377710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceanbreeze7/pseuds/Oceanbreeze7
Summary: Hindsight is 0/20.OrWhere Alex never had to deal with the complications of his mission spontaneity and his passion for arson.It turns out, dealing with the complication looks like shopping at a grocery store at 2am in Ohio- while having a minor crisis over a temporarily blind assassin.For Febwhump day 18: "I can't see"
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich & Alex Rider
Comments: 10
Kudos: 89
Collections: AR Febuwhump 2021





	Hindsight

**Author's Note:**

> Lmao, you know, I traded for this prompt and ended up loving it and writing it so fast in a couple days. I actually adore this idea.  
> Thank you everyone who came to check it out!
> 
> For those of you a little squeamish, there is some description of medical problems (chemical burns) but no active blood or gore really.

Alex thought he had been particularly intelligent for once, and felt appropriately offended when the man behind the desk of the animal hospital threw both his hands upwards, faced the halogen lights and groaned loudly. Alex reeled, genuinely surprised by the warm welcome.

“Fuck you too,” the man snapped, betraying his age as a very tired, very frustrated young adult. “Now the  _ front  _ door? Oh, fucking hell…”

The man’s voice trailed off into scornful low mumbling. Alex could determine a spattering of crude curse words, as well as a few vulgar expressions and a sniff. The man slammed a plastic jar of cotton balls and sterile dog ear cleaner on the counter viciously. 

“Well get over here, asshole,” the man mocked openly, knocking his knuckles on the particleboard counter. He sniffed wetly, either on the cusp of a cold or a bad case of allergies.

Alex drifted over a tad hesitantly, offering his hand where a few skin scrapes were bleeding sluggishly and filled with dirt. The man mumbled more swears under his breath, and a half dozen American slang words Alex couldn’t quite catch.

“Thanks,” Alex said awkwardly, offering his other hand when the man glared openly. “So uh...you’re allergic to cats?”

The man gritted his teeth sniffed pointedly and rammed a cotton ball a little sharply into a friction tear on the palm of Alex’s hand. “I’m fuckin’ allergic to  _ your  _ buddy punching me in the fuckin’  _ face.” _

Alex knew immediately that was impossible. MI6  _ never  _ sent backup, especially not to America. That meant someone else had escaped the explosion or at least had the same idea Alex had with heading to an animal hospital on the outskirts of the next town over. 

Alex tried to hide his brief disappointment, he thought his selection of shoddy animal hospital had been unique and innovative, but clearly, some lowlife had the same idea.

“Here,” the American grunted, shoving the disinfectants to the side to scrounge behind the desk for other things. The man piled up opened boxes of heartworm medication and tick spray, cursing all the while. Eventually, he stalked off into an open examination room, then further back to the medication cabinet secured with four padlocks and metal grating.

“--enough trouble with you fuckers,” he said on the way back, kicking an empty box of flea shampoo that fell onto the ground, “first the damn Amish mafia, now we have the fuckin’ British invasion?”

_ ‘Amish Mafia,’  _ Alex echoed dumbly. 

“Fuckers with guns, all of you,” the man huffed bitterly, snatching Alex’s hand roughly to slather on weird-smelling cream and bandages. Alex had been well outside the actual fire and explosion, but no precautions could prevent skin exposure to the heavy fumes and trail.

America had many odd things- food orders were excessively large, people drove on the opposite side of the road, the concept of  _ S’mores,  _ and there tended to be an absurd amount of guns and backyard chemistry labs. Alex wasn’t the top of his class when it came to chemical reactions, but even  _ he  _ knew never to mix household cleaning products together due to hazardous fumes.

Chemical waste spills were just another day in America, even in this weird land of corn and religious signs on every road. Alex didn’t think even Jesus could save him at this point.

Needless to say, Alex got free from his shoddy handcuffs in a weird basement, found the closet of cleaning supplies and grabbed the bleach- dumped it entirely into the furnace humidifier alongside a couple of industrial jugs of rubbing alcohol, and escaped from the basement window. Alex had barely escaped the blast range before someone inside the house shouted and saw him, then tried to pop a cap in Alex’s backside. The house blew up  _ spectacularly,  _ which Alex  _ honestly hadn’t expected.  _ He thought maybe everyone would start vomiting and abandon ship, leaving MI6 or the Feds to clean up the waste zone.

So, Alex accidentally exploded yet another house, acquired some annoying burns on his arms and neck from the fire, and had potentially contracted tetanus from the rusty basement window.

“Dumbass fucker,” the vet growled, taping a large mesh bandage over one of the largest scrapes on Alex’s forearm, “you need a cone too? You need a fucking  _ cone?” _

Alex wondered what the hell crawled up  _ his  _ ass and died, but considering the options of either corn or Jesus, he didn’t want to ponder it further.

“There,” the vet said, needlessly slapping the countertop, “you need a flea collar? A microchip?”

“No thanks, been there, done that,” Alex said impulsively.

The vet stared at him, then looked skywards. Maybe for Jesus. He said, “...godfucking-dammit you furry  _ fuckers.  _ Get the- get the  _ fuck  _ out of here- go play nursemaid for your John-Wick wannabee.”

“My what,” Alex asked, thoroughly dumbfounded.

The told him, with horrible directions consisting of  _ ‘through the cornfield,’  _ and  _ ‘no not that cornfield, the one with the field corn not sweet corn, you fucking British city-hipster-,’ _

(Alex then argued that recognizing types of corn on sight was not a skill taught in school, to which the vet argued,  _ ‘welcome to fucking Ohio!’ _ )

Eventually, thoroughly exhausted and a tad overwhelmed by the violent aggression of America, Alex awkwardly knocked on a descending metal garage door inside an equally shoddy storage unit, decorated with rusting car frames and multiple signs of raccoon territory skirmishes. Alex awkwardly kicked the busted padlock (shot with a gun, which meant nothing in this lawless place) and struggled to lift up the corrugated metal panelling.

There were thin slivers of windows on the back of the storage unit, serving more as air circulation in case of mould or flooding. Thick chain and wrought iron separated the plastic pane from the interior. Looting must be a big problem in America, or maybe it was standard to take such precautions.

Alex stepped inside, thankful that the gears for the door worked enough to stay elevated and cast some of the light into the unit. It didn’t smell bad, or musty. There weren’t many things inside the storage unit- a few boxes and plastic grey bins stacked on the side. A two-person bicycle leaned against the far wall, alongside a box of children’s toys. 

“Hello?” Alex asked, walking into the unit with a healthy dose of paranoia. “I heard from a vet to come here?”

Ominous quiet chuckles, accompanied by a soft sombre sigh triggered Alex’s hair to stand on end. It felt eerily solemn. Sunlight filtered through the grating in geometric beams. Alex stepped inside- his footsteps shuffling on old concrete and a dropped rubber ball. 

“Are you...okay?” he asked nervously. “The vet guy sent me over here?”

Alex pinpointed the location of the unknown man (based on the baritone chuckle), hiding strategically behind the dark grey bins although on the more illuminated side. Alex stepped forward again, reaching out to put one hand on the bin- if he needed to shove it forward for a quick escape, he could manage it. There was a  _ lot  _ of corn outside, and horror movies taught him that escaping serial killers had an increased survival rate in cornfields. 

“Bloody hell,” Alex said stupidly, bin forgotten. He rushed forward, his knees cracking loudly as he dropped low to reach out- but too afraid to touch. “What- are you…”

Alex knew Yassen Gregorovich better than he knew some of his teachers- he remembered every detail in sharp clarity adrenaline-fuelled focus. Alex hadn’t actually seen Yassen in a while now, they were going to run into each other again at some point. Alex hadn’t expected it to be in a grimy storage unit in the middle of nowhere after blowing up an Amish Mafia house; no horses harmed in the process.

“Yassen,” Alex breathed, his voice wavering as the panic popped up again. There were patches on his face, thin strips of that clear bandage covering goo slathered burns around his jaw. Further on his neck, a larger pad of gauze taped itself around his neck- the shoulder of his thick jacket burned and stinking of burnt leather. Yassen’s jaw twitched- he had more expression visible than normal. Alex nearly gaped at it, immediately dreading for the worst.

“Little Alex,” Yassen said, voice darker and gritted out with some sort of tension Alex couldn’t place. One of his knuckles was dark, a flushed red from punching something recently. 

_ ‘Like an arse of a vet,’  _ Alex realized. Alex swallowed thickly, letting his hands collapse limply onto his thighs.

“I didn’t know you were over here,” Alex said in lieu of an apology. “Are you...okay? I saw the vet- I can’t believe you punched him-.”

“Stop,” Yassen said curtly, voice strained and scathing. 

Alex fell silent immediately. He had seen Yassen cool and careful, unflinching in the face of death. He had seen Yassen panic in the efficient murderous way he handled things- he had  _ never  _ seen the man so…

_ ‘Animal,’  _ Alex concluded after a moment of pause,  _ ‘wild. Feral.’ _

“Why are you here?” Alex asked carefully, “hiding in this building? It isn’t that far away, and I thought SCORPIA would have like, an escape car or something.”

Yassen’s face tightened, the clear plastic bandage wrinkled like a pond’s surface. 

Alex shifted on his feet, settling right on his shoes. He was tired, and the areas where the fire flashed and burned his skin throbbed hotly. Alex asked him, “should I get out of here? Are you going to have other people show up and try to shoot me? I really don’t want to be shot today, and I know that’s probably asking a lot-.”

“Nobody is coming,” Yassen said curtly. It was almost rude, snappish with an undisguised level of actual pain somewhere in there. It...it worried Alex as loathe as he was to admit it.

“Yassen?” Alex asked, swallowing to try and free the strange tone his voice adopted, “what do you mean? Why is nobody coming?”

Alex knew why everything bothered him. He realized it with crystal clarity and the bright epiphany of  _ why  _ everything felt strange. Yassen would never punch someone outright- it would be too visible. Too dangerous and obvious to connect the dots between sore knuckles and a running nose. Yassen was better than that.

And Yassen was hiding somewhere Alex thought of, which shouldn’t happen because Yassen was  _ better  _ than Alex. He was so much better, and instead, he settled for punching a civilian and hiding in a storage unit without securing the perimeter.

Rage to Alex always existed as a fire- one that burned hot and dies fast. Rage to Yassen, Alex learned, was a cold frozen fury that ached and turned him miserable. Alex had never known such a look because such expression was contradictory to the subtle warmth Yassen always treated him with. A fond sort of familiarity, that now absent, made Alex feel somehow a traitor.

“They aren’t coming, Little Alex,” Yassen said in a cruel mockery of his normal callous indifference. He opened his eyes- touched by miasma and stained grotesque red from hemorrhages and a coagulating white film. Alex felt vile, disgusted by himself and the ramifications of his idiotic idea to mix chemicals like it didn’t matter-.

Yassen Gregorovich had no calmness left, only fierce vengeful desperation that wolves did when entrapped. He snarled with mock politeness, “you don’t know? I  _ can’t see.” _

* * *

There wasn’t a difference between medication for animals and medication for humans. They used the same compounds, binders, packaged pills in small orange bottles with a paw print on the lid. An eye was an eye- it didn’t matter if it belonged to a cat or a man.

Yassen Gregorovich receded further behind the small stack of bins, out of sight and out of mind. Alex felt absolutely horrible. He felt like he had committed some sort of heinous crime, which was ridiculous since in the name of the law he probably did the exact  _ opposite  _ of that.

Alex Rider was many things, but he knew when he fucked up, and he  _ knew  _ he had to do something to fix it.

Ohio, wherever it was in America, was a wasteland of strange surreal midnight terror. Everywhere looked similar to an American pull off from their major roads, with sporadic cows that watched him ominously. Yassen hadn’t stolen a car which, Alex thought dumbly, made a lot of sense if his eyesight was rapidly deteriorating due to chemical burns. It was lucky he managed to go so far as a vet, then a place to hide.

Stealing a car took less effort compared to Alex’s tight knuckle hold on the wheel. Everything was reversed and felt disgusting as he attempted to shift the gear into the proper position. He accidentally set off the windshield wipers twice when fumbling for a turn signal. A car honked at him rudely then sped by, ignoring Alex’s increasing anxiety and severe paranoia. Yassen didn’t so much as give Alex a credit card, but a lump of cash had fallen from his pocket in his blind struggle inside and Alex was too opportunistic to abandon it.

He drove until he found a store still lit this late at night. He considered slipping into a convenience store but wasn’t sure just how much he smelled of something toxic. From what Alex had heard of American big box stores, he was willing to bet he could sneak in and out quickly.

Any lingering doubt washed away under the fluorescent lights, staffed by absentminded exhausted underpaid employees and three different shoppers equipped with actual tails. Alex quickly checked out, fumbling with the currency and the stupid soft American money, before loading his things in the stolen car. The door didn’t quite close properly, and he was sure the license plate would be tracked soon, so he kicked it off and slapped a blank piece of paper on the rear window hoping any lazy cop would think it was registration.

Alex returned to the storage unit fully expecting Yassen to be gone. The fact he wasn’t made the situation feel that much worse.

“I’m back,” Alex announced unnecessarily, lugging flimsy plastic bags on both wrists. The metal garage door slid down with an echoing rattle, bouncing on the concrete twice. 

Yassen Gregorovich moved enough to signal that he was still alive, breathing even careful movements even with his head bowed and face hidden. One leg outstretched in front of him, the other bent and served a surface where his one wrist rested gently. Alex walked over, pulling out his phone to turn on the flashlight cautiously.

“I have food for you?” Alex said, although his voice warbled higher to sound like a question, “I have uh, some bread. A couple of bananas because they were on sale, and I got some first aid stuff.”

Yassen twitched and slowly lifted his head.

The camera flashlight threw odder shadows, distorting his features and turning the opaque sclera the colour of clotted milk.

Alex didn’t retch, but something his spasm in his throat and nausea did overwhelm him for a moment. He carefully tried to ignore the surreal grotesque sight of Yassen without his and unpacked his bags. He awkwardly tossed the loaf of cheap bread over, thwacking Yassen’s outstretched leg just shy of his knee.

“So uh, I have some gauze and stuff, and some painkillers,” Alex said hopefully. “And here’s new water, because I was thinking you may be worried about poison or something.”

Yassen blinked, but somewhere through the movement, his eyelids failed. Alex wondered if there was some sort of swelling, or if the dead area of his eyes from the burns somehow prevented his eyes from closing completely. It looked painful, but everything about Yassen looked painful now.

“Are your eyes dry? I got the eye stuff people with contacts wear because eye drops aren’t good for you.”

Yassen spoke with a startlingly hoarse voice, jaw tense from pain or dread. “What are you hoping to accomplish?”

“I want…” Alex trailed off, floundering for words. “I want to help? You?”

Yassen struggled through another fluttering painful-looking blink, his mouth twitching reflexively in pain.

“I mean, I kinda fucked up and...caused this mess,” Alex said, shrugging and crumpling in on himself, “I...I’m sorry. I want to help and…”

Yassen scoffed quietly. It was soft, jarringly gentle compared to the harsh metal and messy broken concrete. Yassen had always been sharp lines and bold bones prodding through his skin. Alex was a bit like that, but the lumps on his shoulders trialling up by his neck always stuck out weirdly from tension and stress. Tom liked to call them his stress pregnancy, nearly to full term with how meaty the orange-sized lumps were.

Yassen didn’t have anything like that. He was all thin rope muscle, but not so slim he looked sick. Well, not before now.

“Have you slept at all?” Alex asked lightly, bending and shuffling to take a lopsided seat on the concrete. It was fiercely cold, he’d have to grab a blanket from the store next time he was out. Weren’t burn victims at risk for hypothermia? Or was that shock?

Yassen ignored him, turning his head to rotate towards the window. His eyes were looking worse, hardening over a bit or deepening to look like quartz rock. It wasn’t like he was  _ completely  _ marble-faced, just...he had a dusting on the surface. Alex could see the blood vessels, and the original blue under it if he squinted hard enough. 

“Can you see the light?” Alex asked openly. The window was bright, a stark difference from the metal walls.

Yassen said, “does it matter?”

“Sure it does,” Alex said instantaneously. “If you can see light, then like...I could put my phone light on? So you can track me? I know you’re freaked out that you can’t see me-.”

Alex shut up the instant he noticed Yassen twitch. His face tightening and closing the open expression. Alex wanted to bite his tongue, berating himself for ruining whatever progress he had made.

“Sorry, that was offensive,” Alex said. He shifted on his butt, the concrete icing the bony parts of his pelvis. “I can just...explain? Where I am?”

Yassen said with a calm voice, “I am not-.”

He stopped talking abruptly, words freezing. Yassen closed his mouth, teeth almost grinding together before relaxing instantly when the throb of his skin and muscles alerted him.

“...not what?” Alex asked him, feeling pity twist in his stomach and disdain for ever  _ pitying  _ Yassen, “because you’re a bit debilitated right now.”

Yassen’s fist tightened slightly in his lap, but he made no move to turn his face away from the small window and bit of brightness able to pierce the veil. Alex swallowed thickly, his fingers fumbling over white plastic bags. He dug out the painkillers and bottles of water. Opening the lid and plucking out the cotton, he nervously pondered if two pills were  _ that  _ much better than three.

“How much do you weigh?” Alex asked Yassen. He pulled his phone, nervously typing the dosage rate for an adult man. “Do you have any other medical things? Like, do you have a clotting disorder or something? Uh, are you allergic to ibuprofen?”

Yassen ignored him. Alex shifted slightly closer, going so far as to reposition Yassen’s knee with a tentative grip. Alex wiggled closer, shaking the bottle both to alert Yassen to the bottle and where he was. “I have water here also-.”

Alex yelped a small noise, quickly changing into an  _ oof  _ as the older man lashed out. It wasn’t refined, or anything so far as a punch. The man used his arm as a blunt object, swinging it around like a bat to clumsily knock into Alex’s side and send him onto the concrete. A few of the pills rattled away- the bottle of water wobbled but stayed standing on the ground.

Sufficiently startled, Alex flopped on his side and gaped at Yassen. The older finally looked away from the window, eyes instinctively rolling and shifting in futile effort to find him. Yassen should have broken Alex’s ribs, and here he was unable to go so far as to knock Alex out of his lap.

“Mate, stop it,” Alex said, dumb surprise ceased to shake its pesky talons from him. “Did you just thwack me? Bloody hell, you’re not my aunt-.”

Alex’s loud mouth made him a target more than once, but this was the first time it was ever so literal. Yassen’s second smack wasn’t nearly as strong as it should be, and it missed Alex’s face and landed on his far shoulder to push him into another sprawl on the concrete. A grey plastic bin thumped as Alex’s foot kicked it, the bottle of water rolling away cheerfully.

“Oi!” Alex spluttered, “watch where you’re swinging-.”

Yassen’s mouth pulled back into all likeliness to a snarl. Alex had only a second to recognize it was a little heartless for him to say that- but it didn’t give Yassen the right to take out his frustration like this.

“Stop being a brat,” Alex said, skirting back to snatch the escaping bottle of water. “I’m trying to help you-.”

“Stop pretending to be righteous,” Yassen said icily, fingers flexing and curling into his thigh. “ _ You  _ did this.”

“And I’m trying to bloody help you!” Alex shouted back, resisting the urge to chuck the bottle of water right at Yassen’s head. “So stop being a brat and listen to me!”

He stood there, slowly wilting as the energy sapped out of him. Yassen’s nostrils flared slightly, his eyelids twitching awkwardly as his facial muscles relaxed and left him eerily blank.

“If you want to help,” Yassen said cold and detached- entirely void of personality or any warmth. Yassen reached into his jacket, withdrawing the small shape of a nondescript phone he held with one outstretched hand, “then message a number for me.”

Alex stepped forward quietly, taking the phone as quickly as he could without appearing to snatch it to withdraw somewhere far away from Yassen’s burns and face. The lack of pupils was scaring him, filling him with an instinctive fear like wax figurines and mannequins shared.

“Okay,” Alex said quietly, thumbing the power button which obliged instantly. “Good thing your phone doesn’t have a retinal scan, eh?”

Yassen did not find this funny. 

“The only contact,” Yassen said in an unsettling monotone, “message it.”

“And say what?”

Yassen tilted his head then. The underside of his left eye, near the tear duct, bloomed red from a broken capillary. The burn on his cheekbone looked red and inflamed. Yassen said, “terminate.”

Alex’s thumb paused on the open screen, the tiny keyboard looking at him mockingly. The only contact was marked _ ,  _ which very much felt ominous.

Alex had fucked up more missions statistically than he had managed missions flawlessly. He knew instantly how to contact for help, and he knew how help wouldn’t come. The level of panic and frantic aggression Yassen had first expressed did not match that of an evacuation team or a support group. The word  _ terminate  _ wasn’t something about the mission.

Alex swallowed thickly, silently exited out of the messaging app and drummed his thumbs across the phone screen to mimic the sound of typing. He finished and watched with a level of dismay and sad acceptance as Yassen seemed to slump further into himself. In relief and dead and a strange level of mourning.

_ ‘Bloody Hell,’  _ Alex thought to himself and set Yassen’s phone to the side. He refused to touch it again.

“Let me look at your face,” Alex said with new determination. He was going to fix this, he  _ was.  _ “I can try to wash them out-you got something from the vet?”

Yassen sighed quietly, then lowered his one leg to open his posture. He didn’t seem interested, instead only humouring Alex in a weird final act. Alex crawled right up into Yassen’s space, pulling out his personal phone to work as a flashlight.

Up close, it didn’t look  _ worse  _ but it still looked freakishly wrong. Alex never realized how terrifying the prospect of blindness was, how scared and isolated Yassen must feel now. 

“Tilt your chin up,” Alex said quietly, using one hand to push the man’s head up further. Yassen’s skin was warm and dry, dehydrated and exhausted. 

Alex worked the best he could, scrambling for dog antibiotic eyedrops that (after a quick search on his phone) would help keep away any other complications. Yassen twitched away from him, jaw flexing and tensing when he jerked away instinctively. Nothing was coordinated or planned, everything wild and improvised because absolutely blind, Yassen  _ couldn’t  _ do anything.

They struggled awkwardly, and Alex started to suspect that Yassen was only obliging because he thought soon there would be a group to come by and kill him. SCORPIA was good at cleaning up messes. Or maybe Yassen would find a way to finish that himself- or maybe he’d wait for infection or starvation to kill him slowly in a forgotten storage unit in goddamn  _ Ohio. _

“Have you ever killed someone, Little Alex?”

_ ‘Oh no,’  _ Alex thought terrified,  _ ‘not this.’ _

Yassen’s face looked worse, and if Alex weren’t so much a coward, he would have asked to cover them with bandages. Maybe he was self-punishing himself, forcing every second to face the horrific consequence of careless chemistry.

“Yeah,” Alex said quietly, “there...there were casualties before-.”

“I asked if you ever  _ killed  _ someone,” Yassen clarified, voice low and hoarse. Something had changed in him, bringing a new level of honesty that was unwelcome. “Watched them die from your hand.”

Alex licked his lips and very anxiously said, “I- I’m not going to kill you-.”

“You already are,” Yassen said brutally.

_ ‘He’s baiting me,’  _ Alex realized numbly,  _ ‘he’s terrified and trying to scare me.’ _

“You did this,” Yassen said, dismissively lifting one hand to brush against the dead corpse eyes that pierced Alex and looked through him. Yassen tapped his finger along his temple, indenting the swelling that wouldn’t go down. “Are you pleased? It must be quite an achievement, Alan Blunt will be very proud of you.”

Alex knew Yassen was trying to bait him, but for a moment rage swelled and it worked. Alex shouted back angrily, “oh shut up! Just because you’re miserable doesn’t give you the right to try and piss me off!”

Yassen flinched back, head rotating slightly as his eyes scanned and failed to focus on anything in particular. The shouting had echoed, disorienting his rough approximation for where Alex was. Alex stomped over, pointedly sitting so his thigh touched Yassen’s foot. The glazed sightless eyes rotated to almost looking directly at him.

“You’re a right prick,” Alex said hotly, “and- and I know you’re bloody scared but stop it! I’m here and I have your bloody money, so I’ll keep running to that weird American store and buy you the sugar bread or whatever shite is in this, and  _ make  _ you eat it! You are going to be  _ fine!  _ Or- or I’ll go punch that bloody vet again and get you more eye drops!”

Yassen’s face twitched, tightening and then turning horribly sad. He said, “it’s too late.”

“No it bloody isn’t,” Alex spat furiously, “because I  _ never  _ get backup and I’d have to be an  _ idiot  _ to not recognize you wanting me to call for- for a damn missile strike!”

Yassen tried to blink again, and Alex angrily punched his leg. Alex said, “you are going to just- just sit here and I will  _ make  _ you better, you hear me? So shut the hell up and eat the goddamn bread!”

Yassen, mystified and struggling through some sort of internal crisis, ultimately ate the bread.

* * *

Time passed.

_ Slowly. _

But, ultimately, the two eventually saw eye to eye. With minimal shouting.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you all enjoyed it!


End file.
